Coat Repair

If you go outside on a stormy day in a shoddily-made coat, you’ll get cold. And if neurons don’t wear their own proper protective layer, malfunction and neurological diseases can result. Their sheath is made of a substance called myelin (green in the brain section pictured). This can degrade as we age, so researchers are investigating how it's produced and maintained. In mice, they studied the impact of removing Mfsd2a, a protein that transports lipids to the brain to help myelination. Removing Mfsd2a was like robbing a construction worker’s toolkit, and oligodendrocytes – the cells that produce myelin – couldn’t mature and do their job. Without Mfsd2a delivering the essential lipids, myelination decreased. Raising levels of the protein or the lipids it transports might encourage the production and repair of myelin sheaths, which could help prevent birth defects like microcephaly, or stave off conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Vetrivel Sengottuvel and colleagues
• Signature Research Program in Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, Singapore
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Journal of Clinical Investigation, April 2023